Application of pre-adaptation strategies to improve the growth of probiotic lactobacilli under food-relevant stressful conditions

showed to be more tolerant to the challenging conditions applied in this study. Anyway, the pre-adaptation at conditions SUB_1 (pH 4.5 and NaCl 4%) and SUB_2 (pH 5 and NaCl 2%) speeded-up its growth kinetics by reducing the length of the lag phase under sucrose stress and enhancing the maximum growth rate at the highest pH tested. Moreover, an improvement in biomass amount was observed under sucrose stress. The whole data evidenced that the application of the appropriate pre-adaptation condition could contribute to making probiotics more robust towards challenging conditions due to food matrix, processing, and storage as well as gastrointestinal transit. Further studies will be necessary to gain insight into the proteomics and metabolomics responsible for increased tolerance to stressful conditions.